Review of Durarara!!

This show can be described in just two words: Organized chaos. Basically every review Ive seen for this show complains about the shows awful pacing and storytelling, and while I too will do this, I also want to spin a positive on it. The only reason I didn't drop this show within 5 episodes is because Izaya is voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch in the English dub and his performance was, as always, phenomenal. However, after about 6-7 episodes of world building I got hooked to the show. Story: 6 I absolutely loved watching this story. I couldn't wait to see where every episode would go,or what stupid plot twist the next episode would bring. My enjoyment aside though, it took this season nearly 10 episodes just to get all its characters in the same "setting" (By setting here I mean a situation where they could interact in any way). On top of that, this show uses the weirdest narration I have ever heard, having the characters narrate over the story in the third person, trying to sound all deep but instead they just repeated the same lines over and over and over. To add on to this, every single episode after the story started getting going would have an insane plot twist. It was almost as though the writers looked at the character cast and thought... this character seems kinda normal... GIVE IT A MAGIC POWER. Overall, it was highly enjoyable, but the writing rivals SAO in quality.

Characters: 2 for everything not Izaya/Celty. 10 for Izaya and an 8 for Celty.
Ok so Im breaking this one into 2 categories. Every single character other than Izaya and the Black Rider was bland and stereotypical. Mikado is your generic shy guy who doesn't know his way around a girl and then slowly becomes a bad ass because reasons, Masaomi is your generic foil to the generic Mikado, loud and expressive, and Anri is generic love interest. Shizuo got literally 0 character development that was worth anything, he's just super powerful man who hits stuff. These are the main characters of this show...
Izaya on the other hand, is a brilliant character. He's a psychopath, whose motivations aren't explained (In this season I would assume), his actions are always completely random but with a certain goal in mind, and of course he is voiced by Bosch in the English Dub which makes him that much better. Izaya constant manipulation of every single character in the show is extremely complex, and sooooo interesting to watch.
Celty is just a well written character as she learns to overcome being a "monster" in a human world, and the absence of her head and memories. Her story was always interesting and always felt much better thought out than any other.

Art/Sound: 10
I don't think anyone can argue that the animation in this show is brilliant. The same goes for Sound as well, although the show did use one OST just a tad too much. Oh well though.

Overall, I did enjoy this season and I'm glad I finished it and Im currently binging the second season. Despite the strange writing, I did honestly enjoy every episode after the world building. The constant plot twists were stupid, but made the show difficult to predict for me. The characters were boring, but imo Izaya makes up for it. Maybe I'm just biased because Lelouch voiced Izaya but sue me :) Izaya for president